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We've enhanced our commenting system for the Crain's community

Today, we are introducing a new, enhanced commenting system to our readers. Powered by Disqus, a platform used by many media organizations across the country, the new commenting system allows users to sign in through Facebook or Twitter, as well as through traditional site registration on the Crain's Detroit Business site.

Other new features:

"Like" comments: The star function allows you to like comments, which are then ranked in order of number of likes. This means the best comments -- based on input from the Crain's community -- will appear first.

Share function: You can easily share comments through your own Facebook or Twitter feeds.

Threaded replies: Replies to individual comments will be "threaded" so that a conversation within a set of comments will be linear.

Add photos or video to comments: If you have a link, photo or video that will illustrate your point, feel free to post it.

Abuse alerts: If you believe a comment is inappropriate, you can let us know -- and we will be alerted immediately. This will allow us to react more quickly to the fraction of comments that abuse the system.

If you have commented in the past, you may notice those comments have disappeared. There also may be select other areas of the site that are changed.

As we transition to the new system, we made the decision to transition without migrating those comments. Monitoring comments from one system instead of two will make it easier for us to foster community interaction.

Please give the new commenting system a try, and let us know what you think. If there are any problems, let us know in the comments -- or email me at nhanus@crain.com.